... Which brings me back to my original point that you disagreed with. Give kids vouchers. Make private school available for all kids regardless of race or income bracket. Make schools compete, and the best schools will invariably survive, which will give kids discipline and likely better food at school too.

While techinically this may be true, I think it's a lot more complicated.

I mean, eating nutritiously deficient foods may quench your hunger at the time, but it probably means you'll be hungry again earlier, causing you to either have to keep restricting yourself (which might bring other problems, I don't know, but it's not like your body makes you hungry just to screw with you) or to eat too much - in calories, but not in nutrients.

Either way it may make the whole "eat less, exercise more" mantra a lot harder to live by.

Most of the out of shape people I know aren't starving all the time... they are just doing nothing.  In school you used to be able to FORCE kids to exercise in gym class... now you can't do that because of feelings and parents and lawyers.

As someone who lost more than 80 pounds and has kept it off for over 10 years, and has helped several people lose weight while eating a moderate diet that includes their favourite foods, I can say with confidence that it really is that simple.

There is a multi-billion dollar industry that exists primarily to misinform people to sell their quick fix solutions and snake oil that is highly successful. While there usually is a grain of truth to their claims they are often taken to a level far beyond what the studies claimed to convince people that they’re fat because of some dietary evil du jour.

Or to put it another way, very few people eat excessive calories out of hunger; they eat these calories because eating is an enjoyable activity that can often be done socially. People will often admit that they're not hungry when they sit down to watch a movie with a big bowl of popcorn or a big bag of potato chips but they do so anyways because it is enjoyable to watch a movie with snacks. On an occasional basis this is not a significant problem, but when people have made a habit out of snacking when they're not hungry while doing something (like watching TV or playin games) on a daily basis it rapidly leads to significant obesity.

Well, I've know quite a few fat people who said they had to eat something every trhee hours or so.

But ignoring this point, since it seems to vary, the gist of what I'm saying is that by eating food with few nutrients and lots of calories you're more likely to over-eat, be it on a single sitting or over the day. By getting fatter, your metabolism tends to change, which further changes the likelyhood of you actually exercising, which screws you up even more.

So yes, having children exercise is extremely important, but it seems to me nutriotionaly poor foods will make the whole situation harder, as in being harder both not to overeat and to exercise properly, so it's also an important part of the puzzle.

Besides, it's not like health is limited to how fat you are.

So what you're saying is that we have a problem.... :p

Every advanced culture in the world has a large or similar number of obesity and overweightness... Tech helps us be lazy in both eating poor foods and easy access to them, and lack of exercise. 

It's clear that we need to build exercise robot suits.  Because... that would be cool.  And I know a few overweight people who would love to jump in one of those.

Well, yeah we do have a problem :P

And I'm not sure how a robotic exercise suit would help.

But really, all I was trying to say is that to me it seems pretty obvious that it's alot easier to eat three ounces of Ruffles when you're not even hungry than it is to eat six hard boiled eggs. Yet both have a similar amount of calories.